Team Info and Contacts - Banana

[mostly-harmless]

I agree, but we should phrase it as friendly as possible.
"We are concerned that our map info goes to Templars & Imperio via Banana and PAL. We therefore suggest Banana makes their map trades with everybody else first before exchanging maps with us. We have complete knowledge of all the lands of our opponents while this is not the case the other way around.
As a thank you gift we would like to offer you our galley the RBS Discovery (a proud ship with a very experienced crew).
And please accept our request for Guilds this turn."

mh

[Swiss Pauli]

Logged in this morning to find that Banana was proposing a map excahnge as well as Guilds and I didn't recall us agreeing to trade maps, so I removed the map trade and proposed Guilds only. There was a message from Banana saying that things are getting interesting and he'll send us an email tomorrow (i.e. Monday) morning.

[sooooo]

I have sent this email:

Hi Banana,

The person who logged in rejected the guilds map deal because he didn't know if we had consensus on making the map trade yet. We weren't expecting you to get paper so soon so it caught us by surprise. If possible could you accept the guilds gift separately, preferably by the end of the turn. We will almost certainly agree to the map deal, but it takes a while for our members to chime in with their opinions. So far it's about 4-0 in favour of making the deal. As soon as we can we'll offer it to you. We have complete knowledge of all the lands of our opponents while this is not the case the other way around so if you want to trade with any of the other teams then we suggest that you do it before we trade with you so that we don't share our map to other teams.

Oh, and we'll be gifting you the RBS discovery next turn. She is a sturdy ship (>2000 years old!) with a good crew

Cheers,

Realms Beyond

[mostly-harmless]

4-0 must sound like an overwhelming majority to a 1-man team.
We should probably tell him that we are still 12+ very active members.

mh

[sunrise089]

In case I'm not one of the 4, I support the map deal with the "trade to RB last and then stop trading" clause, provided he makes the guilds trade first.

[dsplaisted]

How about we propose that after the map trade is complete, neither team can trade maps with another team without approval from the other team. This should last until the NAP expires or just X number of turns from now.

[Zeviz]

How about we propose that after the map trade is complete, neither team can trade maps with another team without approval from the other team. This should last until the NAP expires or just X number of turns from now.

Sounds good. (I support map trade with above caveat.)

[Kodii]

If I am reading civstats correctly, we now have Guilds. I'm gonna do a quick peek in game to confirm

[Dreylin]

4-0 must sound like an overwhelming majority to a 1-man team.
We should probably tell him that we are still 12+ very active members.

mh

And we've had at least 7 different people log into the game so far this turn!? Maybe I should rush home just to make it to 8....

[ruff_hi]

I'm pretty sure I am not in the '4', but I am ok with map trade if we include dsplaisted's limitation.

[sooooo]

I sent a reminder to banana about guilds.

Sorry to bother you Donovon, but it would be really useful if you could get us guilds by the end of the turn. We have a horse archer 1 turn from completion that we were hoping to become a knight.

P.S: It seems that the proposed map trade has gone through unanimously in our team. We trust you not to trade our map to other teams.

[sooooo]

An email from banana:

Sending it now. I had sent it once already, but it looks like the turn got reset.

It goes without saying that your map will stay secure. Thank you for entrusting us with it.

Another note: we had to switch to Banking, but we will discover it in 5 turns. However, this move got PAL to drop their guard and open up to us about their intentions. It looks like they are going to help the Imperio/Templars alliance any way they can, even if it means gifting tech. They don't plan to get involved militarily at this point. They asked us to come aboard as well, but I am no fan of dogpiling.

Once Banking is discovered, I should be able to switch to Gunpowder and will hopefully get it in 9 turns or less. Hopefully this won't change the tech path we discussed earlier. Plus it will allow us to give you both Banking and Gunpowder for Astronomy.

I am trying to figure out if PAL is testing me with their email, and being a relative newcomer, I am not sure I have learned all the tricks of the trade in regards to deceptive diplomacy. It goes without saying that you are not to question them about anything I have told you here --- it will totally blow my cover. Not that expect to have that cover for long, I'd at least like to use it to our benefit for the next few turns. They will know by Thursday that I won't be joining their alliance.

So it looks like it will be a 3-to-3 game (if we can get the formidable Rabbits on our side! I am working on them as well, but they haven't responded yet.), as it should be. Please let me know what questions or comments you may have regarding the above.

Regards,
Donovan Zoi

A big "Doh!" about them researching banking before gunpowder. I presume that this was a deal with PAL that got them music as well as paper.

I think we should have a shot at persuading them to research gunpowder before banking. They would be breaking a deal with PAL but if they accept that they are in a 3 vs 3 alliance, against PAL, then surely they would want to give us our tech before they give PAL theirs. We did kind of have a deal that they would go for gunpowder next. They would have to research gunpowder and say something like "Banking will be delayed a bit since we remembered we had a trade deal with RB. It should be along soon!". What do they want banking for anyway? Kuh.

I wonder if we could get them to go along with PAL's suggestion, to act as double-agents for a while.

[Swiss Pauli]

We can point out to Banana that PAL has a lot of pop, has a large standing army, is about to discover Nationalism, is Spritual, and there's only 16 turns left in his NAP with PAL. As a result, I think we should propose that he tell PAL he's going for Gunpowder first for reasons of national security.

I don't agree that we should use him as a double agent, as that could bring PAL down on him, and we need him to be peacefully teching to help keep us going.

[sooooo]

Let’s see if we can try to persuade Banana. Draft:

Hi Donovan,

Thanks for the map trade. Quite interesting how your continent panned out. Your information about PAL trying to form an alliance with us is welcome. You can be secure that any correspondence you send to us will remain private. We do not currently have diplomatic relations with PAL, but we did hear from Templars that PAL offered them to be in their alliance. We are still communicating with Templars, but not a lot is coming out of it. Their dilpo guy Aidun is training to be a diplomat IRL and sends is sprawling emails that don’t actually say anything. But they do occasionally supply us information about PAL so we keep the emails going.

We were rather disheartened to hear that you will research banking before gunpowder. You are a sovereign nation and can research what you want, but that doesn’t stop us trying to persuade you to go for gunpowder first . Here’s our attempt:

Gunpowder is the tech that will put us over the edge vs templars. We have the globe theatre ready in about 7 turns. Once that is finished, we can draft a unit 11 turns out of 15 in that city. We have also been optimising our other cities for drafting quite a while. Currently we have a stack in the north that could defeat the Imperio stack should it appear (it has been stationary for a long time). Any remaining troops we are committing to the templars. Their stack that was heading to our city of Pink Dot has retreated and is visible to us on the border. We could launch an attack at their other city of Jericho at any time we want but that leaves Pink Dot vulnerable. If we can draft our cities quickly then we can both cover Pink Dot and raze Jericho. The only problem is that our macemen will have trouble with the templar crossbows (of which they have quite a few). If we can draft Oromo Warriors (unlocked by gunpowder) instead of macemen then we have a unit that the templars cannot counter effectively. Drafting Oromos at our globe theatre city instead of macemen would be a massive boost to us.

Regarding your deal with PAL: We can suggest that you research gunpowder, then on the turn you discover it and are questioned by them, send an email to PAL saying “We remembered that we owe RB gunpowder from a previous deal, so had to get that first. We are researching banking right away and will get it in x turns. Sorry about the delay/inconvenience”. This may seem dishonest, but PAL are an extremely shadey bunch so don't feel guilty. They have done similar things to us in trade deals in the past and most importantly lied to us early in the game. They requested horses for 10 turns to kill a barbarian axe that threatened to pillage. We naively agreed, only for them to slave about 7 war chariots and use them to attack Rabbits, a team we did not want to hurt.

Another reason is that PAL have a high population and are about to research nationalism. They seem to be good players and could be planning a nationhood strategy too. So in the interests of your own national security, the earlier you can build /draft muskets the better.

If there is anything else we can help you with or give then drop us an email.
Realms Beyond

[ruff_hi]

no need for a draft - I think that is good to go.